Boulton considered mineralogy to be the Lunar Society's established field, a source of knowledge for metallurgy, ceramics, and gas chemistry.
Erasmus Darwin, however, had a particular fondness for botany. He was not only a doctor but also made his own medicines, making him something of a pharmacist. Thus, botany had become an arena of competition rather than cooperation within the Lunar Society.
As for the flammable fountain Metternich had demonstrated earlier, Edgeworth understood it this way: it was made from the two combustible gases that composed water. Metternich had broken water down by some method, making it flammable.
Georgiana, meanwhile, thought Metternich might have used coal gas or something similar, and then they began discussing a "terrifying" subject.
In the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis, God did not create light first, but water and land. The earth was void and chaotic, and the spirit of God moved upon the waters. Only then did light come into being.
Their circle had such a question: when the Earth was formed, which came first—water or land?
The "Neptunists," represented by the German chemist Werner, believed that the Earth had once been a solid core surrounded on all sides by water containing chemical elements, which gradually formed rocks.
The Lunar Society were "Plutonists." They had observed that rocks contained many vertical faults, and that the cycles of deposition along those faults were often interrupted by violent uplift caused by subterranean heat and pressure. Thus, the Earth had formed through continual, gradual destruction and reassembly.
Metternich came from Germany, and that combustible gas was the product of research by those "Neptunists." Georgiana did not know what to say, because it contradicted the Bible.
Noah had built an ark to escape the Great Flood, allowing some species to survive. Setting aside the question